I drive long haul for a major van line and my wife is an office manager at the same co. We suffered a 5% pay cut in June 2010, and another 6% in August 2010. Combined 22% decrease in salary for our household. Luckily we live comfortably within our means and although it was a huge hit it didnt put us in a situation where we were about to lose our home. I own my Rig outright and that is what saved us. Other drivers who had $2,000 truck payment or more had to go to other companies and some gave their trucks up all together. I really hope the economy rebounds soon ( but it doesn`t look good ). The trucking industry has been a dying profession for some time now and its only worse with everyone cutting rates to fill out a truck. I am on a pretty steady dedicated electronics fleet which keeps me full all the time but the rates are about 1/3 of what they were ten years ago. In reallity I haul more for less and with fuel averaging $4.00 a gallon Nationally its hard to keep above water. Thank God my wife is a whiz with numbers and saving. Sorry so long winded.

you know when i graduated high school in 04 and decided im going to do what i love and im going to open a mechanics shop in green bay wisconsin and after about a year it was just too hard to try to stay above water so i closed the shop and starteed working for other people but by 09 the job market in green bay was bad enuf that the staffing companies were going out of bussness and i was layed off from my job more then i worked and well it just so happens that we did get a job in nebraska to do and while i was here i met my wife and i got like 4 differant job offers so when i got back to green bay i packed my stuff up and moved to nebraska and i havent had any problems with a job since but on the same note yes im working but if the company was busier i would be getting more hours but im just thankfull to have food on my plate a roof over my head and a loving family sorry its so long the economy really screwed things up for me but alot of good things happened because of it too

Hasn`t made much change for me except that I do a lot less driving because of gas prices. I have been at Wal Mart for 5 years and can work in any department or place so I get lots of hours. I have been one of the lucky ones that didn`t get cut back hours when sales were down....

Did made extra efforts to reduce Electric bill. Gone from 74kWh/day to 45kWh/day with the AC running. Electric bill down $70/month by removing extra 25 year old fridge and 20 year old 16 cu ft freezer. (downsized the freezer to 7 cu ft).

Also bought a Outdoor Wood Burner for the upcoming winter to reduce the electric use further. It will heat our domestic HW and our home. This should prevent our heatpump from running. Expected daily electric use to be less than 25kWh/day.

Business is picking up. Being in Sales it`s important for those bonus checks. Recently got 3% pay increase. First in two years. Work from Home.

Get IRS rate for business trips (currently .55/mile).

A little harder for vacations since we are boaters seeing $4.59/gal at the marinas. (our boat get`s 2-3 MPG`s).

Spend more time at home. Renovating slowly since we became empty nesters. Clearing out the junk.

i definitely ride my motorcycle more than drive my suburban these days. i won`t have the option when winter comes around, but for now it helps with the gas issue. beyond that nothing has changed much, i watch what is on at my house and turn things off when they don`t need to be on. but i`ve done that since i was a kid. I`ve been lucky enough that i haven`t been out of work, the industry is definitely dead, but we cover a large area so we do what we can. hopefully someone up top realizes we need to bring jobs back to america, so that people can make money, and bring our economy back. anything that can be made in america, should be. making that happen will turn the economy around without the need to spend billions in "creating jobs" that only last a few months.

Horsepower is how fast you were going when you hit the wall, Torque is how far you went after you hit the wall.

I started my landscaping business in 2008 right when everything started to go south. The first two years were slow with growth mixed with rain shortages in the summer. The 2010 and 2011 season has seen a good bit of growth with the expansion of lawn service division, fertilization division and with adding commercial snow removal. I am not a big company, I mostly do all the work from, mulching, pruning, hardscaping, design and install. I have a part time employee. I consider myself very lucky starting the business in times like this and doing very well. When things improve more we should be able to kick more ass.

the economy hit me hard i was in a highend sales position near wash DC and was living large had my own house with a family and life was good and then economy took a turn for the worst i was laid off from my job and went looking for new work it took me 2 yrs to find another job which im currently in right now but people say why 2 yrs because of this everyone i talked to said to apply here apply there and when i went to see these companies they were all like just go online and fill out an app and so i did but my biggest thing is face to face i wanna see who im working with and they do want to see who is applying and everyone wanted experience and how can you get experience when no one will give you a chance these days its really hard especially if you dont have any money to go to school well i finally found a job at servpro a fire and water restoration company and loving it great work great people cant ask for much more than that